Notebook CPUs

[kona]

I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Does anyone know much about the different CPUs? I've seen the following:
1. Celeron. Is this the same Celeron as you would find on a desktop?
2. Pentium 4 Mobile. Is this the same as a normal P4 with lower power consumption?
3. Centrino. I think this is a combination of P4 Mobile with a specific motherboard/chipset and integrated wi-fi.

How does the Centrino perform compated to the others? I'm asking because it seems quite a bit more expensive, is it just the wi-fi that bumping up the price so much? Also it's clock speed is lot lower, so for the same money you get a Celeron 3.2GHz you get a 1.4GHz Centrino. I know clock speeds don't mean much these days, but does it offer the same performance?

[Digfox]

I can't give a decent answer although I bought a Intel Centrino Notebook in July of this year, and did do some reading up about this, but quickly:

1. There is a mobile version of the Celeron (Celeron M). I believe that Notebooks can be made with both chipsets.
2. The Pentium 4 M has lower power consumption, although I'm not sure that's the only difference. I know that that the original P4 core will/has been discontinued and Intel are favouring using the old P3 core. But I'm not sure what effect this would have on the P4M
3. Again I believe the Pentium Mobile is a continuation of the old P3 core, becuase of that chips favourable attributes (lower power consumption etc). I've attach the article from Tom's about the latest 'Dothan' core on the P M. It has a 2MB cache which gives it a performance boast over seemingly higher Mhz CPU's (as you state Mhz is not the only measure of a CPU's performance).

http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20040510/dothan-01.html

I believe it more costly to manufacture, hence the higher prices. The Centrino includes the whole 2200B/G chipset as well, which gives it higher battery life and integrated wireless.

I have an Acer Travelmate 291Lci with a Centrino 1.4, 512MB RAM, 40Gig drive, and its been a joy to use and own. It has a cracking battery life, between 4-5 hours depending on what you're doing, nice screen and runs everything well....although I'm selling it soon because I want a desktop that I can customise and run games on.

UPDATE - Hah ha I was right an Article from Anandtech with the history of the Pentium M and it's P3 origins...http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=1800&p=2

[charlaph]

The pentium 4M is a bit of a stormer for games and suchlike due to it's short pipeline (compared to the full-blown P4) and consumes about 1/4 the power of the desktop chip. There's a wealth of information about it in this months Custom PC mag - along with a review of a Socket 479 desktop motherboard. I couldn't comment on how it does in a desktop, but it looks good as an option for a quiet/media desktop.

[Digfox]

That'a a good point, when I said my P M ran everything well, I meant all Windows applications I've thrown at it.

You'd definately need to look into this more to find out which chip would be best for games, as well as trying to find which laptops include the best Mobile GPU's. In that sense a P4 or P4M may be the best choice for Mobile Gaming. Also I'm not sure how the Athlon Mobile's or A64 chips chompare.

[kona]

Thanks for the replies. I'll do a bit more research at Custom PC Mag and tomshardware.

[Crisp_Rapper]

ah, my dad built me up a pc using a chip from a laptop... i'm not a computer whizz or anything but i think he said it was a 1.6 or something he'd overclocked to 2.2.

i haven't actually got the pc running at the moment 'cos it needs a hdd but he hooked it up and it seemed to run very sweet indeed. i'll get some more info.

[charlaph]

That'd probably have been one of the old Mobile Athlons, they overclocked like bastards, the 2500 was a monster for the price it retailed for. I have a feeling the P4M is similar. I'll have another read of Custom PC later and see what they said about it specifically.

[Crisp_Rapper]

i think it is an athlon actually... he's a bit of an amd fan really.